Demand for Ed. Games, Simulations Surging Worldwide

The global market for learning games and simulations is growing and likely to continue to expand over the next few years, driven in large part by the booming use of mobile technologies, according to a recent analysis.

Revenues for game-based learning in 2012 were $1.5 billion, in U.S. dollars, and will grow to $2.3 billion by 2017, an 8 percent increase based on the five-year compound annual growth rate, says Ambient Insight, a market research company that has reported extensively on worldwide trends in education purchasing.

The market for simulation-focused learning, meanwhile, is even bigger—nearly $2.4 billion last year. And it is projected to grow by 23 percent, to $6.6 billion in 2017, also based on the compound annual growth rate, which is meant to calculate the growth of investment over time. The estimates for games and simulations do not include projected revenues from hardware.

Currently, the top-buying nations of education-focused games are the United States, Japan, South Korea, China, and India, in that order, Ambient says.

But by 2017, the market will shift. The biggest buyers will be China, the United States, India, Indonesia, and Brazil, the report predicts.

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